Hard disk drives are well known. One problem with hard disk drives is that their failures can cause data corruption, which results in damaged/corrupted files. A corrupted file may result in the loss of valuable information. A disk drive failure may also result in the inability to boot a computer. Hard drive failures often can go undetected for long periods of time (e.g., until a corrupted file resulting from the hard drive failure is noticed).
One conventional solution is to use backup or restore programs, which can restore corrupted files or restore the entire hard drive. However, these approaches suffer from one or more of the following problems: First, the backup may be too old where the corrupted file does not exist in the backup or may be too back level to be of use. Furthermore, the restore itself may result in loss of other data. As a result, the user would not be aware of which files are corrupted and when the corrupted files became corrupted. Furthermore, the backup may not capture the corrupted file, which may happen if the corrupted file was excluded or locked when the backup was performed. Furthermore, if the hard disk failure is such that the user cannot boot the computer, the user might not be able to restore the corrected file.
Accordingly, what is needed is an improved method and system for identifying and recovering a file damaged by a hard drive failure. The present invention addresses such a need.